Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm a Supervillain

by Richard Roberts

  I heard my voice projecting out of every car and house I could see, so my message got through. School wasn’t in session, but how many superheroes sent their kids here and lived in the area? We might be drowning in opposition in a minute.

  With any luck, my plan would hold. I rubbed the top of Vera’s head, and she took the hint and stopped broadcasting. Then I sat and kicked my feet some more while the superhero world scrambled.

  I didn’t see it coming. Shrieking filled the world, stabbed at my ears, vibrated my bones and teeth, and made me more than a little nauseous. I fell forward off the bomb, barely able to control my limbs. My voice sounded pathetically distant as I yelled, “Vera, project his weapon back at him!”

  The shrieking didn’t stop, but it moved away, stopped tearing my body apart. I climbed awkwardly to my feet. Even Ray staggered as he got up.

  Echo stood in an open doorway of the school, clutching the sides of his helmet and gritting his teeth. The screeching stopped as whatever he used to project the sound burned out under Vera’s override. Did I see a few sparks from his other equipment?

  The clever little rat. Big rat, compared to me. He’d staked this place out waiting for us, hadn’t he? He thought he had us by surprise. He’d weathered the sonic weapon much better than we had, and through the ringing in my ears I heard him declare, “I have more than enough weapons left to defeat you, Bad Penny.”

  Echo sounded confident, but he was the superhero I’d wanted to see most. I stretched my back, listening to the ringing gradually ease. “I’m sure you do, but I have a much more hilarious game in mind.” I kicked the button on my bomb.

  “One hundred. Ninety nine. Ninety eight,” it recited loudly and so very slowly.

  I rubbed my ear through my helmet and told Echo, “Here’s the rules. We’re going to go very far away, and if I see a giant blue ball of imploding plasma on the horizon I’ll know you failed. To make this fair, here’s three hints: One, you might want help. Two, do not destroy the bomb. I’m betting your sensors have told you that already. Three, you don’t have time to try and catch us. Bye!”

  “Ninety. Eighty-nine,” the bomb announced as I activated my light bike and zoomed away, leaving Echo stuck with it. Either the sonic shock had rattled him, or he’d accepted my warning. He didn’t chase after us.

  I didn’t go far. I looped around to the residential section of Western and got off my bike to wait for Ray and Claire. They came zipping up the street together, Claire skating and Ray keeping time with her at a run. I’d have liked to have stuck with them, but I hadn’t figured out cruise control on my light bike yet. It went “fast” and “really fast right now I mean it.”

  Claire looped around me twice as she slid up, then hugged her rag doll and asked, “What happens when the countdown gets to zero?”

  I gave her my most sarcastic sidelong stare. Since she couldn’t see that through my visor, I hoped my voice would project the same emotion. “Nothing. Do you think I’m crazy?”

  Ray cracked his knuckles. “So, the library?”

  “The library,” I agreed. Then something hit Vera.

  Wind whipped past me, a gray shape I didn’t get to see clearly. I heard one loud crack as it knocked Vera out of the air and another as she hit the asphalt across the street.

  I had half a second. “Waityoureallywanttohearthis!” I yelled at the top of my lungs.

  I hadn’t been hit yet. Claudia was listening. Ray and Claire watched the buildings around us, for all the good that would do. Generic Girl was too smart to let us see her coming.

  I held up both hands, palms out. The less threatening I looked, the better. “Right now, Cabal is robbing Voidworks. Witch Hunter is robbing the Museum of Jurassic Technology. Spark and Ground Pounder are robbing Substation Twelve. Spider blackmailed us to create a diversion. They’re all diversions. Lucyfar, Entropy, Rage and Ruin, and She Who Wots are attacking the library right now to steal something powerful called the Orb of the Heavens.”

  No response. Claudia had always been suspicious, even paranoid. In this game, she needed to be. I went on. “We’ve had enough. Spider can reveal our secret identities if she wants. She may think we did what we were told, but we’re heading to the library right now. We’ll beat everyone she sent if we have to and guard the Orb until the official heroes arrive. I’d like your help. The adults don’t want to admit it, but you’re the most powerful hero in LA.”

  Still silence. She didn’t trust anybody, and never had. What could I say? Nothing was enough, but I tried. “We’ve known each other for three years. In all that time, have I ever tried to hurt you?”

  That sounded so harsh. I should have described middle school life more tactfully.

  Or maybe I’d phrased it exactly right, because Generic Girl walked out from around the corner of a building hardly twenty feet away. “You had better be telling the truth,” she growled, and flew off. West, not East. Maybe she wanted to stop the side crimes first?

  That wasn’t my problem. I ran across the street and scooped Vera up in both hands. A hairline crack scarred her crystal surface. More cracks damaged the ceramic, but they didn’t worry me. I tapped her gently, and just about cried as she floated up next to me, off-white chips resuming their fairy body shape. Her head turned, and her black pupil watched me. She didn’t act hurt.

  I wanted to fuss over her the rest of the day, but we’d wasted too much time already. We were only a couple of blocks from the Hollywood and Western station of the Red Line. We hurried down there and caught a subway train.

  It felt a little ridiculous sitting on a subway train on our way to foil an ongoing crime, but it was the most direct way I knew downtown. It also gave us a breather.

  Claire put her hand on my shoulder. She looked honestly worried. “Do you think we can do this? Spider didn’t send big name supervillains on this job. She sent the ones who don’t lose.”

  I put a hand on her shoulder right back, and one on Ray’s. I meant this. “Win or lose, we prove which side we’re on today and show Spider she can’t blackmail us. Once we’re heroes, releasing our secret identities won’t just be personal, it will be useless.”

  I looked at Ray. I didn’t think about it until I realized Claire did the same thing. He flashed me a grin. “I told you before, I’m with you all the way. I bet being a hero is just as much fun as being a villain.”

  We were about to find out. We got out at Pershing Square Station, and when we reached ground level I noticed immediately that traffic wasn’t moving. A big crowd stood at the street corner. The fight in the library must have already started.

  We got moving. I turned on my light bike, and it slid around stopped cars and gawking pedestrians alike until we cleared the crush. Claire slid around easily, vaulting over a couple of cars. Ray ran across the hoods like stepping stones.

  It had started, all right. Giant blades of grass surrounded the library. Dandelions stood as tall as the roof. I pulled my bike up to the Fifth Street door and climbed off in front of two huge suits of golden armor armed with swords.

  I took one step, and they crossed their swords in front of me. “Library card, please?” one asked in a pleasant tone that pretended there was no implicit threat at all.

  Actually, I had my library card on me, didn’t I? Ray might have joked about bringing my phone, but I had it with me again and I kept the card tucked into the case. I pulled out my phone. Yes, there was my card. As Ray and Claire fell in behind me, I held the card up to the guardians. They withdrew their swords without a word. They even let all three of us in without challenging Ray or Claire.

  The checkout area right inside had been replaced. We walked into a beautiful Greco-Roman dome made of white marble and gold leaf, with statuary and bas relief all along the walls and roof. An old woman sat at a writing desk that grew out of a column of marble in the middle of the room. The book on the podium was huge, at least half her height. This had to be the Librarian. She was so old she looked shriveled, her gray hair was tied in a bun,
and her gray dress couldn’t have been more recent than 1920.

  The entire desk swiveled with a grinding noise to face us. “The Children’s section is down the hall on the left, or on the other side of the Young Adult section,” she told us. She sounded stiff and distracted, but not mean.

  “Yes, but we—”

  “The Children’s section is down the hall on the left, or on the other side of the Young Adult section,” she repeated. Okay, that had an edge of threat.

  I didn’t want to fight the Librarian if I could help it. She was on our side. The Orb of the Heavens was at the bottom of the big pit in the middle of the library, but our opponents could be anywhere. We might as well start in the Children’s section.

  The door to Young Adult was on the other side of this room, so we walked over to it silently and stepped into a war.

  Across a grassy courtyard, a stone castle wall was manned by teenagers who scrambled up and down wooden scaffolds and stone stairs to defend it. The enemies trying to climb over were animals of all different kinds, shouting in English and wearing scraps of armor and wielding medieval weapons. All the animals were roughly human-sized, no matter the species. A few of the teenagers on this side wore armor, but others wore hides or rags and leaves. Quite a few were dead. I saw more blood than I was expecting, but not enough to be real.

  I didn’t think any of those teenagers were real. The real teens huddled in a hay-filled stall by the back wall, looking shell-shocked. The defenders were phantoms out of storybooks. They weren’t even all human. A centaur stood not far from us, firing arrows over the wall.

  The Children’s section would be on the other side of the wall, with the talking animals. Claire echoed my next thought out loud. “Rumors of the Librarian’s power have been greatly underestimated.” She sounded as awed as I felt.

  The teens in that stall weren’t awed; they were terrified. I had to help them first, if only with a few words. I scurried over to the stall, and told them, “Listen. The library exit is still where it used to be, and the way is clear. You might want to stay here. Those kids on the wall will defend you to the death, and so will the animals. That’s what they think they’re doing right now.”

  I was pretty sure all of that was true. The college guy with the bandana nodded. The rest calmed down until they merely looked stunned and nervous.

  That was all I could give them. “If we can get over the wall into the Children’s section, we can go out the other side and get around the Librarian,” I told Ray and Claire.

  Ray grinned. Criminy, he wasn’t scared at all. He reached out to pat the badly cut stone tower next to us confidently. “Getting over the wall will be easy. Just ask the big guy here.”

  I looked up. The tower was a crudely shaped giant, sitting with its knees drawn up against his chest. It didn’t move, but it was already looking down at us, so I asked, “Sir, will you lift me and my friends over the wall? We have evil to fight.”

  Stone scraped against stone. A hand big enough for all three of us to stand on slid down to the ground, so we stood on it. As delicately as if we were a porcelain teacup, the giant lifted us into the air, climbing to its own feet to reach over the top of the wall.

  From up here I could see the Children’s section. It looked almost exactly the same, except with talking animals instead of teenagers. Both sides were defending the wall, not attacking.

  Claire saw something else. “That’s Rage and Ruin!” she shouted, pulling on my arm and pointing. One of the animals was bright red, and another vivid blue. They weren’t even animals so much as clawed and fanged hairy things.

  “Allow me, please.” Ray grabbed one of the giant’s fingers for support, leaned way over and shouted, “There! Your true enemies, the monsters who set you against each other, are getting away!”

  It worked. Ray had known his audience. Heads turned, and a huddle of animals stepped in Rage and Ruin’s way. The red villainess clawed one of them open. I was guessing she was Rage.

  That was exactly the wrong thing to do. Animals and teens both piled on, stabbing with swords and spears and beating with maces. There was nothing we could add to that. When the giant set us down on the Children’s side we ran for the door on the far side. I took one final look back to see the giant closing its stony grip over Rage and Ruin, then ducked out into the hallway.

  “This doesn’t look like anywhere I know in the library,” Ray immediately announced. He wasn’t kidding. The library had some nice stone, a lot of institutional tile, metal girders, all kinds of decors. It did not have narrow wooden hallways that reminded me of Mech’s base, except much dustier. Oh, and with more doors. Lots and lots of doors, lining both sides of the hall.

  “One way to find out,” Claire quipped and opened a door. Smart girl, she stood back behind the door itself as she did. Nothing came out.

  We peeked around the edge into a dark Shakespearian theater. On the lighted stage someone was giving a speech, but I didn’t get to hear. A gunshot boomed, and a tall man in a top hat staggered to his feet, covered in blood. People screamed.

  We shut the door. “History,” we all announced together. Ray rubbed his gloved thumb over a metal plaque next to the door handle, clearing the dust enough to read “Peterson House, April 15, 1865. Assassination of President Lincoln.” I moved my assessment of how ridiculously powerful the Librarian was up another notch.

  I looked around. Every door had a plaque, but I didn’t care about those. We moved down the hallway to the corner and looked around. At the end of an identical hallway I saw a doorway opening into a wide, tiled space. We ran for it, and out into the main hallway that ran down the center of the library to the pit.

  The hallway looked mostly the same. I could see where it let out into the marble and gold checkout dome on one end. I couldn’t see the other. The hall widened into a big, empty decorative room in front of us, but a black metal gate ran right down the middle, walling off the other side.

  The gate was huge, gothic, and almost solid. It would have been solid, except a hole had been rusted through the middle. Quite a large hole, with room enough for the frozen tableau posed inside it. In the very center stood a weedy guy with the fur and features of a black cat. I’d seen him in Spider’s office. From the rust, I guessed this was Entropy.

  He wasn’t alone. He was surrounded by gods. Well, the men and women I recognized looked like gods. The white-skinned woman with the helmet—that was Hela, Norse goddess of the dead. The blue-skinned guy with four arms had to be Siva, Hindu god of destruction. The hawk-faced guy in the toga… was that Pluto? Nobody could mistake Anubis. There were more. They stood ranged in a circle around Entropy, arms outstretched toward him. Nothing moved in that circle, not even the thick mist that kept me from seeing past.

  I looked at Ray and Claire. Their expressions echoed my feelings. We were not going through there.

  “We’ll get in from the walkway above,” I suggested.

  The stairs were still in place, the skinny set running up the side of this hallway to the upper floors. They looked quite normal for the first floor. On the second floor they became modern—if nonfunctioning—escalators. Then we reached a gap. The second floor and third floor didn’t connect. Between them blue sky stretched in all directions. In the distance, giant birds with long tails and more than two wings looped and soared. Anxiously, I reached out a foot and placed it on a cloud arranged like a stepping stone in front of me.

  It held. Good enough. We ran up to where the escalators resumed and ran up those to the top floor balcony.

  “After this is all over, do you think we can meet the Librarian socially?” Claire asked as she hopped from cloud to cloud.

  “Tesla’s Spontaneous Combustion, I hope so.” I grabbed her arm and pulling her up onto the escalators.

  “I wonder if I can get her to sign an autograph?”

  We poured out onto the balcony, and Ray sniggered. “Only if you want it stamped with a return due date.”

  This should have been
a great place to get down into the pit, but the Library’s remodeling had replaced the railing with a wall of glass. We could certainly get through that, but I stared with leery uncertainty at the man-sized barnacles cemented to the window, and the walls and ceiling around the glass. Their feathery, grasping arms did not look friendly.

  “It will be easier to go around to the walkway,” I suggested to Ray and Claire. They nodded. We could see it from here. We ducked through one of the doors on either end of the balcony.

  I stumbled to a halt in a dark, empty church. Claire was the last through, and a thick, wooden door slammed shut behind her. I’d made a big mistake assuming the stacks between us and the walkway looked the same from the inside as the outside.

  His voice quiet and even, Ray noted, “The cross is upside down.”

  “And bleeding,” Claire added in a whisper.

  “Ray, break the door down now!” I barked.

  He did, slamming his shoulder against it. The door exploded in chunks of old wood, but the balcony wasn’t on the other side anymore, only a night time graveyard.

  Ray gritted his teeth. “Horror section. Not good. Make a run for Mystery on the other side?”

  I nodded. Behind me, a woman begged, “Please, take me with you!”

  I looked back over my shoulder. She’d been hiding behind a pew, and looked normal. Nice short dress, but not fancy. Not plain enough to be suspicious. Normal. If she was real, we had to save her. “Come on!” I ordered, waving my hand.

  The four of us poured through the door. Above us, something shrieked, and I saw a winged, bipedal figure pounce from the rooftop. Ray’s reflexes beat it handily. He smacked his palms together, and the golf ball sized energy blast he had time to pull out still knocked the monster off course. I pulled my sugar wand out as it hit the ground and sprayed it thoroughly. Thorny vines grew up instead of a candy shell, but they held the squeaking, biting thing in place. It wasn’t going anywhere. That was what mattered.